I’m a LCIOC Certified Professional Life Coach. In addition, I have fifteen years of Twelve-Step background.

I help women and men like you define and envision exactly the love relationship you want so you can set goals and take bite-sized actions to make it happen.

In visualizing your best possible relationship you will rediscover your core values and begin living in them.

I’ll help you understand why you attract and are attracted to emotionally chaotic people. Self-awareness is always the beginning of positive change, but it’s just a beginning.

If you’re currently single, I’ll give you a S.M.A.R.T Dating Plan which will get you out of self-destructive dating patterns so you can choose someone who shares your values and relationship vision.

I’ll empower you to take responsibility for your own life by identifying the self-defeating character traits that are keeping you stuck in toxic situations. Traits like:

An Overabundance of Empathy

Misplaced Responsibility

Rescuing

People-Pleasing

Abandoning Yourself Because of Love and/or Sex Addiction

I offer concrete tools and actionable tasks to help you shed these self-defeating traits so you can build or re-build your self-esteem.

When your self-esteem grows you’ll find the romantic partner in your life will either treat you better or leave. (Or you might give him/her the boot!)

I’ll work with you on building a Mental Health Village that will support you long after our work is done, so you’ll always have a recovery infrastructure.

This will include members of my private Facebook group, it could include the right Twelve-Step group, and/or a thriving relationship with a Higher Power of your own understanding, even if you are an agnostic or an atheist.

You don’t have to be ashamed that you fall in love with narcissists or toxic people. You have a case of codependency that you caught in childhood, just like you might catch the flu. It’s not your fault and there is a cure!

Isolation keeps us ashamed and suffering. There is a wonderful group of ashamed, suffering folks out there just waiting to embrace you. Shared suffering can bring great healing and reignite purpose.

If we were as invested in our recovery as we are in our justifications for not starting recovery, we’d be living our life to maximum potential.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe a Higher Power exists, HP believes you exist and is standing at the ready to help. Call yours whatever you like. Mine is the ocean.

The greatest impediment to recovery and reclaiming our true selves is Pride. Humility is the launch pad to recovery.

You. Are. Enough. Right now, just as you are. To be loved.

My Own Path to Arriving Here:

There was THAT night. I was in year three of what turned out to be a five year relationship with a man I was insane over. And not good insane. Really sucky insane.

I didn’t think about anything but (we’ll call him) Jeffrey. Would he come over when he said he would? And what kind of mood would he be in? Sometimes he’d be mopey, or critical, or cancel plans, or flirt with other women in front of me.

If I got fed up and threatened to leave then he’d be Prince Charming. Saying and doing all the right things until he had me back and obsessed all over again.

It was exhausting.

THAT night he was supposed to come over at 10 p.m. and spend the night at my apartment because his truck needed to go to the mechanic.

The plan was I’d follow him there in my car, he’d drop his truck to the repairs department and I’d drive him to work.

10 p.m. came and went. No Jeffrey. 11 p.m. 12 p.m. You might know exactly what I’m talking about. I texted, called, no answer, no nada.

At 1 p.m. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Bounding out of bed in pajamas and slippers, it took me approximately five minutes and seven seconds to squeal to the curb of Jeffrey’s apartment building.

I slammed the car door shut, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the driver’s side window. I was startled to see a heart-palpitating, nostrils-flaring madwoman.

I gave her no mind as I compulsively speed-walked to Jeffrey’s apartment. I was unsettled to see his truck in its parking space; like a cockroach on a scoop of vanilla ice cream or some other David Lynche-ian harbinger of doom.

Next I detected a gentle flickering from Apt. 122. I detected this because I was hunched in a Crouching Tiger, squinting through the infinitesimal cracks of his lavaliere blinds.

I discerned the melodious stylings of KWAVE wafting through the door crack against which I had my ear pressed. A little Teddy Pendergrass circa 1987 played.

I had a key to Jeffrey’s apartment and could have let myself in. But I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know what was behind that door.

I knocked.

Murmurs emanated from within. I heard the ominous shuffling of feet. The door cracked open just wide enough for Jeffrey’s face to fit. He was more stoned than usual, his obsidian eyes opaque, with no affect.

“Jeffrey?” I squawked.

“Yes?” he responded, as if I was an anonymous court clerk delivering a summons.

“I thought you were supposed to come over to my house when I got off work?” I shrilled.

Instantly I became a woman in open sea surrounded by sharks, clutching a deflated life preserver because in Jeffrey’s flat gaze I spied nascent rebellion, a hint of cruel pleasure.

And that’s when I saw Her.

I knew, but didn’t know she’d be there, the centerpiece of this philandering scenario lit by Pottery Barn candles and scored by James Taylor’s “Mexico.”

She was sitting where I’d often slept, on Jeffrey’s futon. She was chicly-thin and wore a turquoise mid-riff top exposing a silver belly ring above skinny jeans. She had close-shorn, spiky platinum hair and exquisite eye-art that rescued her from barfly, white trash.

I wondered, peripherally, if she’d show me how to do that to my eyes? … probably I’d have to pluck my Frieda Kahlo brows more effectively …

“I don’t know. Maybe. I think you better go.” It took me much longer than it should have to realize Jeffrey was talking to me. So I left.

But guess what? I dated Jeffrey for two more years! Even moving in with him. But THAT night was my rock bottom and the moment I got myself into recovery and didn’t stop until I was finally able to let that toxic love go and miraculously invite the real love of a good man who I’ve been married to for 16 years!

Let me tell you. If I could do it, anyone can do it! Especially you. xo

FAQs

1. He’s the one who’s behaving badly, why am I the one who has to do all the work?

If you have one dissatisfying or even toxic relationship after the next, then the man you’re with now is just a symptom of the problem.

This is not to say you’re at fault for his bad behavior, but you may have a habit of selecting chaotic men, so your picker’s your problem and I can help with that.

2. Are you going to make me work the 12-Steps?

No. My job is to help you create a system and goals that works specifically for you. My experience in 12-Step programs might inform some of the questions I ask you in order to help you get more clarity about your situation and inspiration to pursue your love goals. But I am not a 12-Step coach.

3. My relationship’s not that bad. The next girl might be worse!

I’ll help you unearth the limiting fears that tell you to stay in any kind of toxic relationship because it’s too scary to leave. Together we’ll work to have you walk through these fears and replace them with visualizations of your best life and curiosity about other possibilities.

4. What if I’m just not lovable?

I will help you discover where this negative self-defeating belief came from and together we’ll come up with an action plan to dismantle it.

My recovery articles have been featured and published in magazines both off and online. Have a look at some of my most popular articles below:

A Few of Shannon’s Article Clippings From Around The Web

The Huffington Post, Love & Sex, ``6 Ways to Get Off a Commitment-Phobe's Merry-Go-Round.``